When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, it’s a good core workout. If you’re sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More
Many of us remember coming home from our elementary schools with freshly glazed pinchpots, cups, or whatever else our young imaginations could conjure up. Saturday mornings at the Randall Museum can bring that memory back, or create a new one for the youngsters. Ceramics make great gifts — especially on Mothers' and Fathers' Day. Hop on board for the Randall's once-weekly class, and for $6 and two weeks to have your work fired and glazed, you'll have all the materials you need.More
December is almost over - the New Year is coming up and everyone is busy drying off from the rain or holiday shopping. Let's take a look at what's happened this month.
The hottest current thing in the world of tapioca drinks, a.k.a. boba tea (or, as Hillary Clinton recently called them when she tried one in New York, "chewy tea") isn't a crazy new flavor or new way to marinate the root starch balls — it's cotton candy!
There's no secret to helping you focus better — unless you count Adderall — but studies have shown that listening to music before or while performing a task can improve attention, memory, and even your ability to perform mental math.
PostedByMatt Smith
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Is 'No gay tourism' the 11th plague?
With fiscal and economic plagues already haunting California, could a Proposition 8-inspired professional brain drain -- and even a tourism boycott -- be next?
During a conversation Tuesday, Rob Black, vice president for public policy of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said he's already heard rumblings of boycott sentiment.
"I got a call from out of state at noon today that said a family of five was flying up here to their great aunt's birthday party. The guy's great aunt called him and told him not to come, that he shouldn't spend money in California," said Black, adding that he fears Tuesday's state Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8 may tarnish California's image among visitors."I do think it's going to have an impact on how people view California. California has always been viewed as the land of opportunity, where you're judged on your merits, and hopefully not on your skin color or sexual orientation. It's where you can come and work hard and fulfill the American dream. Since gold miners came out here, that's been the role of California. To enshrine prejudice in the Constitution is not a step in that direction."
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Joe Eskenazi
Muni CEO Nat Ford meets the press
Today's very special noontime Board of Supervisors meeting clocked in at an extremely svelte 50-odd minutes. But, as was always the case in the ongoing wrangle over the Municipal Transportation Agency's budget, you could have boiled the whole thing down to a momentary exercise:
Clerk: What'ya think, Sophie Maxwell? This budget good enough?
Sophie: Suits me!
And there you go. Once again, Maxwell decided that the act of rejecting Muni's budget and forcing the MTA to draw it up again from scratch was too radical for her, and once again the board's progressives were hamstrung. By a 6-5 vote, the supes opted to not reject the MTA budget, essentially enshrining a slightly modified version of the "compromise" board president David Chiu brokered on May 12. Your fares will start going up in the summer.
I'll admit it -- I listen to a lot of Energy 92.7. And over the past weeks and months, that's meant I've been repeatedly subjected to Dos Equis' "Interesting Man," commercials. You know, the one's about the old guy with the spray-on tan who doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, he prefers Dos Equis. The guy who is apparently responsible for the sun coming up an hour later on May 6 so as not to spoil his Cinco De Mayo party. The one who teaches dogs to bark in Spanish...
Genius? Genius! Last I checked, genius required originality. Improbable one-liners describing an allegedly interesting man flooded pop culture in 2005, with "Chuck Norris Facts." Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. He sweats Gatorade. His tears cure cancer...Too bad he's never cried. Etc., etc., etc.
PostedByAndy Wright
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:13 AM
We like bikes. We like nonprofits that work to end violence against women. Sometimes we like Yelp, although Yelpers don't always like us. But there was something about today's Weekly Yelp (an e-mail newsletter that's also posted on the site) that smacked of PR gone awry. Apparently, others thought the same thing, as when we checked back at the Web site today, a questionable headline had been changed.
The newsletters are always a round-up of favorably Yelped business and they're always brought to you by someone: The Stop Aids Project's name was attached to a round-up of the best "street eats" sent out on April 14th, for instance. This week's email was entitled "Put the Fun Between Your Legs." (The title is actually the only reason I clicked on this particular missive, I usually ignore them, so kudos to the writer for appealing to my baser instincts.) The round-up featured positively Yelped bike repair shops in the city and was brimming with sexual innuendo. "Can you hang?" it queried, "Megan W is up in spoke over Mojo Bicycle Cafe, what with their "vegan donuts and an endless parade of good-looking boys..." and went onto crow that "Amy D took her bike into Valencia Cyclery, where the "very kind (and cute) repair guy" fixed the problem with "literally one finger." *sigh*"
Who was this Weekly Yelp brought to you by? San Francisco Women Against Rape.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:45 AM
Jim Herd
More good news for Muni...
This morning, the Chronicle reported that the city's budget analyst, Harvey Rose, released yet another damning report on Muni -- and this only hours before the Supes meet to determine (this time, definitely!) if they'll approve the Municipal Transportation Agency's budget.
The report runs to 100 pages -- and, sadly, it isn't on the budget analyst's Web site, so we haven't read it. But, based upon reporter Marisa Lagos' summary, it appears Rose has more astutely reported on a problem SF Weekly brought up in January: Muni's fare inspection program costs far, far more to run than it returns in fines -- and, even if the goal is to goad people into paying, Muni hasn't figured out a way to track if the fare inspectors are cost-beneficial.
Crunching likely salary numbers provided by the city's office of the
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:30 AM
UPDATE, 10:20 a.m.: Shmaltz owner Jeremy Cowan replied that he hadn't heard of this suit until being informed of it by SF Weekly.
He said Torres "approved everything" and laughed bitterly when told she
was seeking $250,000. "I haven't made a quarter of a million dollars in
13 years of brewing He'Brew Beer," he said. "Good luck with that."
A woman describing herself as a "well known side show performer" who has picked up a "favorable reputation as a 'snake charmer'" -- we're guessing charmers with "unfavorable" reputations don't last so long -- has sued the San Francisco proprietor of the Shmaltz Brewing Company. Stephanie Torres -- aka "Serpentina"-- claims that her 6-foot-tall, 140-pound, albino serpent-toting image has been swiped by Shmaltz -- owned by San Franciscan Jeremy Cowan, who founded the popular He'Brew line -- to hawk its "Coney Island Albino Python" lager.
In the suit filed earlier this month in New York, Torres claims she's long been waiting for compensation. "On or about the spring of 2008, the principal of the defendant corporation promised the plaintiff a to-be negotiated sum of money in consideration for which plaintiff would allow her image to be placed on a beer to be created and sold by the defendant corporation. Defendant never issued any monies to defendant despite her due demand," claims the suit.
Have you reached your limit with stories of murder, mayhem, and Proposition 8? Boy have we got the heartwarming tale for you.
Last week, a frantic man flagged down Officer Patrice Scanlan of the Taraval Station, beside himself over his lost cat, "Fluffy." While most stories involving men who see fit to enlist the police in matters involving a creature named "Fluffy" end poorly, this one does not.
The man said he'd lost his cat a month before -- and now believed he heard him meowing from within a home on the 1700 block of 47th Avenue that has sat abandoned since its elderly owner's recent death. It remains a mystery how the feline found its way within the domicile -- as Scanlan found all of its doors and windows tightly sealed.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 6:30 AM
Burleigh Grimes, the spitting analogy for the state Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage
Barely had the first boo escaped the lips of protesters at Civic Center yesterday when folks began making analogies about Tuesday's somewhat tortured two-part state Supreme Court ruling upholding California's ban on same-sex marriage, but allowing those who married while it was legal to carry on their nuptial bliss.
You don't have to not be a lawyer to be a bit dumbstruck by any ruling that, in essence, states that some activity must be stopped -- except by the folks who were already doing it. We noted yesterday that right-wing proponents of Prop. 8, peeved that the 18,000 or so same-sex weddings were not annulled, compared the situation to slave owners being allowed to keep their human chattel in the wake of laws forbidding slavery. You see what we said about crap analogies? Never mind that this is exactly what happened in much of the northern United States (while slavery was ostensibly outlawed in New Jersey in 1804, a handful of elderly slaves still resided in the Garden State at the onset of the Civil War; they were considered "apprentices for life."). And never mind this analogy somehow compares voluntary, lifetime commitments to involuntary servitude.
No, the analogy that works here, as is nearly always the case, is a baseball one. In 1920, Major League Baseball outlawed the spitball. Yet the league allowed each team to designate two pitchers who would be allowed to continue throwing the banned pitch in perpetuity; in 1921 17 men were still allowed to do so.
PostedByJoe Eskenazi
on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 5:30 AM
Winner or loser?
Whether it's a good day or a bad day, sometimes it helps to stop for a moment and realize that, whether you like it or not, today will eventually be 20 years ago.
With that in mind, determining who won or lost big as a result of Tuesday's state Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8 (but allowing the 18,000 same-sex couples who wed last year to carry on with their business) is tricky. Right now, there's no indication how future generations will remember May 26, 2009 -- or if the Twitter of tomorrow will reduce humans' memories to goldfish-like 10-second increments. Either way, here's our snap take of the winners and losers of yesterday's ruling:
Kate Kendall, Geoff Kors and the other decision-makers in the No on 8 campaign: Without impugning anyone personally, No on 8 was a vehicle driven with Carole Migden-like operating skills; it was a train wreck/capsizing ferry/dirigible disaster of a campaign. A reversal of November's vote by the Supremes Tuesday would have been a Get Out of Jail Free card for these folks. It was not to be. Verdict: Losers.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Catholic Church: We'll keep it short and sweet -- sometimes you get what you pay for. Verdict: Winners.
Sub Pop recording artists 'clipping.' brought their brand of noise-driven experimental hip hop to the closing night of 2016's San Francisco Electronic Music Fest this past Sunday. The packed Brava Theater hosted an initially seated crowd that ended the night jumping and dancing against the front of the stage. The trio performed a set focused on their recently released Sci-Fi Horror concept album, 'Splendor & Misery', then delved into their dancier and more aggressive back catalogue, and recent single 'Wriggle'.
Opening performances included local experimental electronic duo 'Tujurikkuja' and computer music artist 'Madalyn Merkey.'"
